Coulon, T., Barondeau, R., Bourdeau, S. et Hémond, Y. (2025). From LEGO® bricks to VR: Experimenting Collaboration Across Three Different Technological Settings. SSRN, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijme.2026.101444
Abstract :
Collaboration is widely acknowledged as a critical competence for contemporary organizations, yet it remains insufficiently addressed in management education. This study explores how simulation-based training (SBT) can be used to teach collaboration across physical, screen-based, and immersive (VR) modalities. Drawing on survey and qualitative data from 40 undergraduate students who experienced the three simulation modalities, the study builds on O'Leary et al.’s (2020) framework of distributed collaboration to examine how social and material factors interact in shaping learners' understanding of teamwork dynamics. The results extend the framework by showing that endemic-social, endemic-material, relational-social, and relational-material dimensions vary in prominence depending on the technological and contextual configurations of the learning environment. The study contributes theoretically by contextualizing O'Leary et al.’s model within educational settings and demonstrating how experiential design can reveal the interplay between social and material conditions of teamwork. Practically, it provides a structured design process and guiding principles for integrating multimodal simulations into management education, supporting the deliberate development of adaptive and reflective collaboration skills.